Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, broadcasts, and so on. Such networks, which are usually multiple access networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology supported by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). The UMTS also supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides higher data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks.
Some wireless communication devices may be configured to facilitate communication on a single network with one subscription, while other devices can communicate on two separate networks via two separate subscriptions. For instance, a single network device may include a GSM device having a single subscriber identity module (SIM). Another multi-network device may include a dual-SIM, dual standby (DSDS) device that has two SIM cards: one for each subscription. Furthermore, each subscription may be associated with one or more technology type. For example, a first subscription may exclusively support 2G communication technology, such as GSM, while the second subscription may support one or more of 3G communication technologies (e.g., WCDMA) and/or 4G communication technologies (e.g., Long Term Evolution (LTE)).
In GSM, a wireless device in idle mode is required to measure and monitor the power levels in absolute radio-frequency channel numbers (ARFCNs) (hereinafter “channel”) where a broadcast control channel (BCCH) is expected or detected. Typically, the wireless device's receiver is tuned to each specific channel and the power in that channel is measured. After measuring the power in one specific channel, the receiver tunes to a subsequent channel and begins to perform another power level determination for that subsequent channel. This process continues, channel by channel until all the channel powers are measured. As such, receiver tuning overhead is considerable when the number of channels to be monitored is high. For a single SIM GSM device in idle mode, this measuring and monitoring procedure consumes significant power. For a DSDS device, significant dead time is spent on performing these idle mode GSM procedures when the device is in a WCDMA dedicated mode. Accordingly, current idle mode operation of GSM devices may result in wasted resources, such as high power consumption in the case of the single SIM GSM device, and reduced WCDMA throughput in the DSDS case.